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Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Hit Me With Your Worst Shot

So I went to work the other week. Yeah, it's not that fun. But I was looking at this barrage of forms in front of the teacher mailboxes and one of them caught my eye.

And bam! Instant idea. And this was a form that teachers could pass out to their students to fill out. It just gave me an idea for a setting, nothing big.

The day before that, I was loading the dishwasher, something I do about fifty billion times a week. And I had this thought go through my head, and words almost came out of my mouth. I sucked them back in, because I could hear this other mom in my head saying them to her teenage son.

An idea was born.

Then I went to a writing conference. There was a panel on ideas, and how usually the best ideas are those that combine several ideas into one.

So then I felt less stellar about my singular ideas. One thing someone said though, caught in my ears. I think it was Brandon Sanderson, because let's face it, every word the man says is like IDK, gospel law or something. Srsly. The man is a genius and I could listen to him talk for hours.

Anyway, I digress. He said that a common misconception is that the people on the panel (published authors) have these earth-shattering ideas. He said that's not true (which made hope flare in my chest), but that they're taking the really bad ideas and combining them and spinning them and working with them until they're something amazing.

He said he works with the mundane ideas that the rest of us discard.

Can you believe that???

Yeah, I'm not sure I do either.

But it inspired this blog post. And now you've got an assignment. Tell me your absolute worst ideas. The ones you scoff at and wish you'd never had. I want to see if they're as bad as mine.

**They did this during the panel and someone's bad idea was "long hair that's been cut off."

A girl superhero one that I stopped writing after chapter five... just wasn't feeling it and kinda didn't know what the hell I was talking about. There's one worse than that but I'm too embarassed to say it...

I don't remember my worst ideas. LOL Actually, now that I think of it, I think one time I thought of a title for a story called Confessions of some kind of Mom. See, I can't even remember what kind. LOL But I'm pretty sure that story would've bombed. LOL

Great info here! Pretty soon I'm going to be starting a new book and I'll want to remember this for my stuff. Thanks!

Hm, this is actually really hard. I do think we probably selectively FORGET. :P Or maybe not selectively, purposefully. All very interesting, though. *still hammering brain to think of bad idea once thought of*

I tried writing a story about suburban life. My neighbour always mows his lawn, like every tuesday, and I look at my grass sort of overgrown. I thought, you know we live a sort of peaceful life here and my grass isn't mowed, but the neighbour across the street is always arguing with his wife--then goes out to mow. gets all his aggression out by attacking the lawn. I liked the irony of perfect lawn=dysfunctional relationship. However, every time I try to write it, it bores the hell out of me. Perhaps it should be a poem instead.

I once thought about writing a story about a nun that went insane. Thankfully, the thought passed.

It's funny when you think that someone's bad idea could be another person's triumph. For example, I was flipping through channels the other day and found -- on the SyFy program guide -- a story about people getting stranded on an island with dinosaurs and a German U-boat crew.

To me, that has trainwreck written all over it, but someone had to believe in the idea enough to financially back the movie. Right? I mean, right? :-)

Hmmm. This is a REALLY hard question. I once had a dream about a middle school boy who smelled like peanut butter ALL THE TIME, so no one wanted to be around him. Sooo... top that, my little pretty! Mwa-ha-ha. :-)

I had this idea about this guy who gets fired from his job, and because he's so discontent with the industry he's in, he decides to chuck it all and instead try to become a published author, even though he's never published anything before and probably isn't that great of a writer.That was a really stupid idea.And the funny thing is that he's still going at it almost a year later, and still hasn't published a thing.And if that wasn't bad enough, the CAPTCHA word he's looking at RIGHT NOW is "lamers"

Most of my bad ideas come from a crazy dream where I wake up in the night thinking, wow that would make a great book/movie! And I write it down. In the morning I look at it and its completely incoherent and stupid. My husband and I have a good laugh and then I throw it away.

I know this sounds dumb, but that's what we're talking about today, right? Well, anyway--I had this idea for a wizard that goes aroudn the world gathering poetrty from dragons for a book. Yeah, go ahead, laugh at me. I'm laughing, too.

But I did start a werewolf book. For NO REASON, I don't even like werewolves, not remotely interested in them, and there's a million of them out there. I got far into it & thought, "wait, I have no plot other than the fact that this girl is a werewolf".

And let's be honest nothing screams bad idea like a STORY WITH NO PLOT!

Does a space-age setting of a King Lear rewrite count? Thanks for this great post! (P.S. I met you at LTUE, and talked with you about speaking at the League of Utah Writer's Spring workshop. Could you email me, Elana, so I can give you the specifics ? (roxyhaynie@mac.com)

I LOVE when that happens!! Getting random ideas at random times. I've definitely been driving down the highway before and literally smacked in the face with a story idea. How about ... a Romeo and Juliet-based story with a Twilight twist - Juliet is the daughter of a famous goblin hunter and Romeo is king of the goblins?

Yesterday, I was helping my husband with the kids and he said, "Haven't you learned how to do .... by now?" in relation to something I had just done. (I don't remember, but probably cutting the food into the right sized bits.) I thought, "I should write a book called 'Academy for Moms.' Every body wants to know about how to be a great mom, right?" I don't know where I would go with it though.

One of my WIPs finally clicked when I combined three formerly separate ideas.

As for worst idea... one based off a dream. A talent show where guys have a better chance if they wear a sun dress and sing falsetto... There is lots of other crazy stuff in my story synopsis for that one, but I don't know that it redeems the bad idea. lol.

The bad ideas that come to mind that I haven't purged from my memory all have to do with crazy fanfic ideas my friends and I used to develop and sometimes write. They were pretty ridic AND hilarious. I guess we never took ourselves seriously and were aiming for the Awesomely Bad? One can only hope.

A bad idea we came up with that I'm totally not ashamed of? Attempting to write the sequel to the Grapes of Wrath. It was appropriately dubbed Peaches of Anger. We even have a title for the 3rd book to that trilogy. I'm sure Steinbeck is shuddering at the thought somewhere in the Great Beyond. :P

This is the best post I've read in a long time. I laughd so hard that all my coworkers came over and wanted to know what was going on. They don't write so they just stared at the screen with their eyebrows raised.

My bad idea? I've had dozens of horrid ones...

Off the top of my head:

Girl falls down a well and ends up in another world

Thirty-something year old virgin gets 'chosen' by a unicorn to do soemthing world-saving.

I remember having what I thought was a lousy idea for a book and I ended up using it as a backstory for my MC and you know what? That's my favorite manuscript to date. It really is a good idea to recycle, reuse and write it in. ;)

I can't think of any of my own. They're usually discarded before I get very far. My brain's way too crowded with useless information. But my youngest told me the other day that a story about a caveman from space who solves crimes would be really cool. Does that count? :)

Ha ha, we both have ideas on the brain! I'm with the Pat Benetar fans, btw.

My worst idea... so many to choose from... OH! I once wanted to write a book where the guy-mc was going to speak in OLD ENGLISH for the entire novel!! Wow, that would have been prime. Oh man Elana, I'm going down a trip through memory lane now, I've had some horrible ideas!! Thanks for the giggle! And also, thanks for the great post, I loooove hearing about conferences!

Bad ideas, let's see. Okay so nothing's coming to me, but this is not to say I've never had them. Just can't think of any really crummy ones right now. Maybe it's because I've got such a big to-do list and a messy desk that I don't have time to sort out the good from the bad? Eeek. I need a vacation. And a secretary. Oh wait, they both require money. So maybe those are my bad ideas?

I took the loooooongest shower thinking about all my bad, completely terrible writing ideas. But, as my water bill kept going crazy, I kept deciding not to talk about that one or that one b/c... well, b/c, someday if I'm in the right place or the write mood it might morph into the good idea that I originally thought it was... I know they're terrible ideas, but I can't throw them away.

I haven't had a terrible "concept" for one of my stories yet but I have written some crappy scenes that got sent to the chopping block. Make sure you jot down those ideas so you don't forge them. Good or bad. :)

I'm having a hard time remembering it, but it had something to do with a new kid in the neighborhood that was actually an alien, and also something about strawberries - I think he needed strawberries to survive on Earth or something like that. Yes, this was a very long time ago.

Uh, I love Pat Benatar. But now that song WILL NOT LEAVE my mind. WHAT HAVE YOU DONE??=)

I have had some pretty EMBARRASSING ideas. They are that bad. I wanted to write for boys. Since I have SIX of them I think I will have a nice voice for that. But I should not use my idea of the poor boys turning into pieces of candy and experiencing what life is like for candy. You know, the trying to run because someone is going to eat you thing. Shhh, don't tell anyone. That was NOT my finest moment.

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